Akola: A 12-year-old girl was allegedly raped by a middle-aged man at Khamgaon town in Buldhana district, police said on Monday. The accused Shaikh Hasan Shaikh Hussain (40), a resident of Hari File area, waylaid the Class V student on her way to attend nature’s call on Sunday, they said.

Hussain allegedly took the girl to an isolated spot and sexually assaulted her after offering her a Rs 20 note, police said, adding he dumped her at Jiya Colony after committing the crime. Following a complaint lodged by the girl’s family, police registered an FIR under section 376 (2)(f) (committing rape on a woman when she is under 12 years of age) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) against Hussain and arrested him.

In another incident, an unidentified person molested a five-year-old girl at Lohgad village after luring her with chocolate on December 25. A complaint in this regard was lodged by the victim’s mother on December 29, police said.

On the very eve of the New Year of 2013, the life of a young woman was brutally cut short. This young woman with her dreams of education, of a job, of love and happiness, lives on in all of us. Her courage and dignity inspire us to resist the terrible discrimination, bias, and violence that eats into the heart of our society, and to demand justice and freedom for every woman. It takes courage to confront the government, the police and other institutions and demand accountability. It perhaps takes even greater courage to face and fight the daily discrimination and shackles that are imposed on women in our own homes and communities. We hope that we will find that courage in the spirit of that nameless young woman who lives on in our hearts.

We pledge to make 2013 a year of resistance to gender oppression, discrimination, and violence.

We pledge to support women’s struggle in the home, in the community, on the streets, at the workplace and in public spaces for equality and rights.

We pledge to speak out against gender bias and violence wherever we see it.

Rapper Honey Singh has been a chart-topper this year, and two of the five most-searched for videos on YouTube for 2012 were his songs.

The rapper’s misogynistic and deeply-troubling lyrics are unacceptable now to thousands in a country that is mourning the death of a young student who was gang-raped on a moving bus in Delhi. One song, released in 2006, brags about the different ways in which the singer will sexually assault a woman.

In his songs , Honey Singh explains how Dope-Shope is not just not good for your health, but also harms your Punjabiyan di Shaan (pride of being from Punjab). He tells you how not to sell your land away, buying gifts for women and running after them; he makes fun of the brown girl hooked on Angrezi Weed (there is a debate raging about whether he sings Angrezi ‘beat’ or ‘weed’ or both – a confusion which Singh has not cleared), and also tells them to take pride in their brown skinned-sexuality. The cult figure that he is today however, launched itself to iconic status with the song Choot (cunt) – a song that his young fans may experience as ‘subversive’ not merely for its open use of sexually charged abuse but also for the way it seeks to teach the young floundering woman a lesson.

These pornographic lyrics are unacceptable and it is because of women hating (sic) sentiments like these that men think that it’s fine to do what they did on that bus, that December night in Delhi. Let’s put a stop to these subversive lyrics that infiltrate the minds of people who don’t know better and who then justify to themselves the rightness of a crime that harms another human being, sometimes so severely that they lose their lives.”

Mr Singh’s massive popularity is more reason why he should be held to account and told — in no uncertain terms — that his deeply offensive and regressive songs have no place in civilised society. Mr Singh is to perform because the idea is not to curb Mr Singh’s right to express himself – no matter how offensive his lyrics may be – but because the people have the right to not listen to Honey Singh.

Patna: Two people have been arrested for allegedly abducting and gang raping a student in a Bihar village, police said on Sunday.

Police said the intermediate student was abducted at gunpoint on Friday in Vasudevpur village in Samastipur district, around 100 km from here, when she was returning home on a bicycle from a coaching class.

The girl fled from their clutches on Saturday afternoon and reached the deputy superintendent of police’s office with her family members. She has been sent for medical examination.

Police said the two accused — Surendra Mahto and Virendra Mahto — are the girl’s neighbours.
Surendra is a father of two while Virendra’s wife has deserted him. Last week, a 12-year-old was gang raped in a village in Patna district. Police have arrested one of the three accused.

KOLKATA: Fifty-two-year-old Mahashin Ali wakes up with a start every 15 minutes in his ICU cubicle at RG Kar Medical College Hospital. Eyes wide open in horror and gasping for breath, he asks for his wife, who was allegedly gang raped and bludgeoned to death at Sonakharki in Barasat on Saturday evening.”They are killing her. Please do something,” he mumbles hoarsely, before lapsing back into unconsciousness. Doctors say Mahashin is in critical condition, his throat scorched by a chemical that was allegedly forced on him by the attackers. His condition worsened suddenly on Sunday morning after which he was shifted to ICU. He has not been told about his wife’s death.

“He says he is burning up inside ever since an acid-like liquid was pushed into his mouth by the gang. Every time he wakes up, he breaks into tears. His limbs are still shaking and he is repeatedly falling unconscious,” said Mosadul Ali, a neighbour who has been with him since he was brought to RG Kar on Saturday night. Mahashin isn’t poor but took up work at a brick kiln to raise money for his four-month-old grandson who has a kidney ailment.

From his fragmented accounts, Mahashin’s son Alfaz and Mosadul have reconstructed a horrific tale. He had gone to the brick kiln to escort his 45-year-old wife home around 6.30pm when he saw a few men dragging her away into a bamboo grove. It was dark and barring a house, there is no settlement in a 100-metre radius. Mahashin says he ran to rescue her.

“But there were around seven of them. While four raped his wife, the other three pinned him down, tied him and poured acid down his throat. He tried to scream but they shut his mouth with the bottle. After a while, he gave up fighting because his throat and chest had been singed and he had no strength left in him. The ordeal must have lasted about 15 minutes,” said Mosadul. Mahashin could apparently see his wife being battered.

One held for Barasat rape & murder
Raids on for other culprits

A youth in his mid-30s was arrested on Sunday in connection with the alleged gang-rape and murder of a 45-year-old woman and the attack on her husband in Barasat on Saturday night.

Mohammad Ishaq Ali, who police said was a labourer in the Jagannathpur brick kiln in Barasat where the victim worked, has been remanded in police custody for 10 days.

The condition of the husband, who is being treated at RG Kar hospital, worsened on Sunday, prompting doctors to shift him to the intensive care unit in the evening. “He is bleeding from the pancreas and liver,” said a doctor.

“Ali has confessed to the crime,” said an officer of Barasat police station. “He said he and three others had been drinking on the edge of pond near the brick kiln when they spotted the woman around 9pm. They raped and assaulted her and dumped her near the pond, and also threw some chemical into her husband’s eyes when he tried to resist them.”

The cops have detained seven others. “Raids are being conducted in the area to arrest the other culprits…. We have also searched the pond and adjoining areas,” said Sugata Sen, superintendent of police, North 24-Parganas.

A hammer and a blood-stained knife were recovered from the water body. “We suspect the woman had been attacked with these weapons. They have been sent for forensic tests,” the officer said.

The cops also found an empty bottle of country liquor and a navy-blue windcheater, apparently belonging to one of the attackers, around 30 feet from where the woman’s mud-caked body was found.

A medical examination of the body revealed eight wounds inflicted by sharp as well as blunt weapons. “There were scratch marks on the victim’s body, suggesting she had tried to fight off the attackers,” said a doctor at Barasat hospital.

The victim’s elder son had lodged a complaint of gang-rape and murder with Barasat police station. He said her mother had stepped out of home to look for his father when the attackers accosted her. “I later learnt the attackers had dragged her to the edge of the pond,” the son said.

“My father had meanwhile returned home and went out looking for my mother. He was walking towards the kiln when he heard mother’s cries. He rushed towards the pond and saw what was happening. He tried to save her but the attackers threw a chemical powder into his eyes.”

Leaders of almost all political parties made a beeline for the victim’s house on Sunday. Local Trinamul MLA Rathin Ghosh, accompanied by Barasat municipality chairman Sunil Mukherjee, met the family members and relatives around 12.45 pm.

A couple of hours later, Amitava Nandy, the CPM’s North 24-Parganas district committee member, turned up with his followers. “We want the immediate arrest of all culprits. If the police fail to do so, our party will launch agitations across Barasat,” said Nandy. Youth Congress activists, too, visited the victim’s house, followed by Union minister Deepa Das Munshi.

NEW DELHI: Jolted by the extreme cruelty unleashed on Nirbhaya by the only juvenile among the six accused in the Delhi gang-rape case, the government may be looking at enhanced punishment for minors — even a waiver of the delinquent’s age by six months to a year — keeping in view the severity of the crime.

While this review comes too late for the Delhi gang-rape case as it cannot be applied with retrospective effect, the shift is significant because heinousness of the crime committed rather than the exact age of the accused will determine the punishment.

If the government does carry out amendments to enhance the punishment for minors guilty of heinous crimes, juveniles could even face death penalty.

The women and child development ministry that is reviewing the Juvenile Justice Act, is looking at treating juveniles aged 17 or more who are guilty of heinous or violent crimes as adults. “We can have a provision by which six months or a year of the juvenile’s age can be waived if the crime committed is severe in nature, like in this case. If the juvenile has committed a violent or serious crime he can be tried under law as an adult,” said WCD minister Krishna Tirath.

At present, under the Act, a juvenile accused has to be kept in a juvenile correction home or any other reformatory centre for minors. S/he faces a separate trial under the JJ Act and the maximum sentence that can be given is only three years.

The use of death penalty for crimes committed by people younger than 18 years is prohibited under the international human rights law, yet some countries still execute child offenders. Such executions are few compared to the total number of executions across the world. Since 1990,Amnesty International has documented 87 executions of child offenders in nine countries. Several of these countries, including the US, have changed their laws to exclude the practice.

The ministry of women and child development that is reviewing the Juvenile Justice Act is considering such a provision to treat guilty minors aged 17 or more like adults.

Collectives need not always be celebrated; lynch mobs are collectives too, and there was ample evidence of this lynch mob mentality on display in the past few days: baying for blood, here and now. Revenge cannot be an alternative to justice

A mass mobilisation on the issue of sexual violence looks like a feminist dream. Especially, if you recall that only a handful of activists stood shouting slogans in this very capital city, at the Chhattisgarh Bhavan, demanding action against the police officer who had pushed stones in the vagina of Soni Sori. Or, does it offset our reprehension at the re-election of a man who presided over mass rapes of women from a minority community?

Surely, the large number of people at India Gate should be solace to the mothers of Manipur who had to strip in front of the Kangla Fort, home to Assam Rifles, to protest the gang rape and murder of Th. Manorama by its personnel. And to the people of Shopian who shut down their town for weeks after the bodies of Asiya and Neelofar were fished out of the nullah from across a CRPF camp. Will this mass anger scare the doctor at AIIMS, who, months after the women had been found dead and violated, discovered their intact hymens on their exhumed bodies so that the charge of rape against the army men would not hold?

But, should we burden those congregating at India Gate with the memories of Manorama, Soni Sori, Asiya, Neelofar or Bhanwri Devi? Perhaps it’s unfair to expect this young crowd to articulate anything beyond their own anxieties of safety in urban public spaces of a metropolis. Is it not churlish, some would say, to ask these questions instead of celebrating the fact that at least now men and women are coming out and demanding action against rapists? Is it not divisive, some ask?

However, given that it is being seen as a harbinger of epochal change – both, by the media and the participants, both incidentally refusing to be fatigued, discovering the joys of street fighting — it is only in order that we examine what this moment might mean for the politics of gender justice.

But, should we burden those congregating at India Gate with the memories of Manorama, Soni Sori, Asiya, Neelofar or Bhanwri Devi? Perhaps it’s unfair to expect this young crowd to articulate anything beyond their own anxieties of safety in urban public spaces of a metropolis

Ideally, a movement’s energy forces the opening of uncomfortable questions, challenging commonsense understanding and expanding our ideas of justice. One sees that the mass protests at Raisina Hill and India Gate are flattening out complexities: reducing sexual violence to rape alone, and the need for legal reform to simply an inclusion of capital punishment, castration and immediate punishment for rapists.

Feminists have been arguing for reforms in the sexual assault bill on grounds that the definition of rape itself is too narrow. Rape is defined exclusively as penile penetration of the vagina in Section 375 IPC ignoring penetration through several other objects routinely used, especially in mass sexual violence. Threatened Existence: A Feminist Analysis of the Genocide in Gujarat has documented the use of iron rods, sticks, swords to penetrate women as well as the systematic torture and mutilation of women’s bodies.

A whole range of sexualised violence such as molestation, parading, stalking, stripping, are not recognised as serious violations by our legal system. While stalking and molestation are laughed off as ‘eve teasing’ (indeed trespassing is deemed a more serious crime), stripping and parading women naked are often tools of punishment by the powerful. Remember Khairlanji where Priyanka and Surekha Bhootmange were paraded naked before being murdered by the politically dominant caste? Or the young Laxmi Orang, stripped by a group of hooligans, not very different from the stone pelters of India Gate, when she was marching on the streets of Guwahati seeking ‘ST’ status for the tea tribes ofAssam?

As the protests take an ugly turn being overrun by lumpens bent on extracting their money’s worth from this reality TV spectacle, we are being told that there is a real fear of genuine protestors being pushed out by these hooligans. The genuine protestor is being defined as spontaneous, unorganised and politically unaffiliated. It is this genuine protestor that sends a chill down my spine, for the hoodlums out there for a weekend of cheap thrills will be easily identified and condemned. The chorus for castration (surgical or chemical — take your pick) and capital punishment is rising not only from these hordes of roughnecks (though, to be sure, they are seeking blood too), but from the college students, the housewives, the white collar salaried professional, the nice middle class, who many of us were accusing of being apathetic till the other day.

It is frightening that their political baptism comes with demands for instant justice: we want not only capital punishment but a public hanging, preferably following continuous torture. The frenzied and stubborn cries for public hangings, and for the accused to be brought to India Gate, also showed how utterly divorced this class is from the processes of law, governance and even democracy. Feudal ideas of macho justice, to be delivered immediately by the public, coexist with notions of individual choice and freedom to dress and go out.

The latter were deeply political issues foregrounded by the women’s movement but adopted presciently and swiftly by the market too. So we see posters declaring, ‘meri skirt se uunchi meri awaaz hai’ (my voice is higher than then my skirt) sitting comfortably with boisterous demands for death and maiming of the rapist. Castration and shaving of moustache have been seen as apt punishments for rapists in feudal cultures because they hit at the very symbols of male virility. But, ultimately, they remain within the bounds of a phallocentric worldview, which breeds the culture of rape.

Threatened Existence: A Feminist Analysis of the Genocide in Gujarathas documented the use of iron rods, sticks, swords to penetrate women as well as the systematic torture and mutilation of women’s bodies

The ‘genuine’ protestors have embraced this masculinist violence to counter the violence of rape. By showing bangles to cops, and screaming slogans, “Kya Manmohan ne choodiyan pehen rakhi hai?” (Is Manmohan wearing bangles?) they are not even attempting to transcend the patriarchal language which associates the feminine with weakness, and femininity as an object as well as medium of taunt and ridicule.

We have seen this sort of clamour after every terror attack: the demand for a safer city through tough laws, instant dispensation of justice and quicker hangings, fuelled again by a cheering media. This has created an atmosphere where it has become possible to bypass the due process of law. The path to justice is often rough and hewn with roadblocks, especially in cases of gender violence. Prejudiced investigations, prosecution and judiciary and humiliation of the courtroom ensure that conviction rates remain despairingly low.

Fast track courts, not lasting more than three months would be reduced to a farce, with little time to examine and contemplate evidence. And if combined with tough laws and death penalty, this would lead to gross miscarriage of justice. Certainly, we need new laws and swifter conclusion of trials, but it cannot be substituted by ready retribution.

Women’s safety in public spaces is an issue (as is the safety and dignity of domestic helps in middle class homes) but do we want to hand our safety to the police?

In effect, what this will result in is moral policing by men like Mumbai’s cop Dhoble who will go around with hockey sticks breaking up pubs and bars, enforcing their ideas of a safe city. Young couples in parks and public spaces will be hounded — Operation Majnu style — because controlling women’s sexual behavior is the key to women’s safety.

Gender violence is too complex to be reduced to a binary of police and government versus an amorphous ‘people’, ever pure. By venting anger at Raisina Hill alone, we are displacing our own culpability in violence: what about those men who videographed Laxmi Oraon as she ran naked on the streets of Guwahati fleeing her tormentors; the crowd which collected around the dumped bodies of the young paramedic and her friend in Delhi, including women inside cars, not even covering them up, and all of us who celebrate the narrative of national security and look the other way when our armed forces indulge in rape and violence in Kashmir, Chhattisgarh and Manipur?

Collectives need not always be celebrated; lynch mobs are collectives too, and there was ample evidence of this lynch mob mentality on display in the past few days: baying for blood, here and now. As we see hoardings across the city screaming ‘Rape is worse than murder’ and a leading English newspaper runs an opinion poll asking its readers what the best punishment is for ‘a crime worse than murder’, we can see the contours of a new kind of movement emerging in the coagulation of an articulate and assertive middle class and the television media, its spokesperson and cheerleader.

While we applaud the sudden centrality of sexual violence in our public discourse, the outpouring of rage and anger has in fact reinforced and reiterated many of the things that democratic movements have been struggling hard against: tough laws, jettisoning of due process, securitisation of our spaces and lives, and stigmatisation of the rape victim (fate worse than death). But most of all, the very dangerous idea that revenge is an alternative to justice.

The writer teaches at the Centre for Comparative Religions and Civilisations, Jamia Millia Islamia University, New Delhi

Demand their immediate and Unconditional Release! Stop criminalising all forms of dissent and the right to assemble!

From what appears in the news in Malayalam print media, about seven people were arrested by the Mavelikkara, Kerala police from a lodge in the said town alleging them as Maoists. It seems they were all arrested in the afternoon of 29 December 2012 and till late night were not produced in the court. From the civil liberties fraternity it has been made clear that all the seven were remanded in police custody and they have been framed under the draconian UAPA. Even before the seven arrested could approach their lawyer the police have already started planting stories in the local print and electronic media saying that all the arrested have accepted that they belong to the Maoist organisations. Yet another usual story of fomenting rumours about the accused in the media so as to prejudice the courts towards buying the story of the police.

That Mr. Gopal a well known civil liberties activist and former scientist in the atomic research centre Mumbai and Kalpakkam is one among the arrested makes the whole story of the police all the more hollow. Gopal has been quite vocal in the Committee for the Protection of Civil Liberties (Tamil Nadu) as well as with the PUCL Tamil Nadu. Most of these activists while at the same time being students or active with various people’s movements—such as the anti-Kudumkulam agitation which saw widespread solidarity from various sections of the people—know each other and had congregated for a get together to discuss their various experiences is a normal and natural thing to happen with every socially sensitive individual. It is through such solidarities and exchange of experiences that people enhance their world view and move forward in their conviction to stand for and join hands with issues that are of immediate significance for the greater common good and well being of the society.

It has become a set pattern for the police to find ‘terror’ and ‘national security threats’ with every possible such gatherings of conscientious people. It is through such arrests that the ‘anti-terrorism’ industry and and their ilk find common cause for ‘national security threats’ so as to reinforce a mindset and the attendant burgeoning capital intensive industry that it sustains. To add to this two sisters—a plus one student Ami and her sister Savera a 5th standard student—are the others who have been alleged of having Maoist links. That both of them happen to be the children of alleged Maoist activists is the deductive logic that we can get from these police officers. The police also claims to the obliging media that one of the arrested Mr. Rajesh Madhavan, himself a student, had been having links with banned organisations. Neither the media nor the police take the trouble to clarify which are these banned organisations!

It goes without saying that such arrests and the media drill that the police and the investigating agencies indulge in are definitely acts of impunity right from the word go. To cover up an illegal act of detaining/arresting/framing people’s activists and civil libertarians what is called into action are further such acts of impunity—such as the vilification in the media.

The CRPP strongly condemn such acts of impunity to terrorise people as well as to criminalise all forms of dissent as well as the right to assemble, under the garb of ‘national security threat’ not to mention the so-called ‘war against terror’.

We demand the immediate release of all the seven people—Gopal, Ami, Savera, Rajesh Madhavan, Bahuleyan, Shiyaz and Devarajan—immediately and unconditionally!

We also demand the repeal of draconian laws such as UAPA and AFSPA with the cover of which the police and the investigating agencies indulge in the worst acts of impunity.